


what would i give

by Atlanta_Black



Series: Harry Potter One-shots [20]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Gen, GoF canon divergence, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26177548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlanta_Black/pseuds/Atlanta_Black
Summary: Harry Potter never leaves the graveyard that fateful night. The tragedy is the grief his death leaves behind.A sequel directly following the events ofLet It Drownby local_doom_void.
Series: Harry Potter One-shots [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1875151
Comments: 15
Kudos: 81





	what would i give

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Let It Drown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23992198) by [local_doom_void](https://archiveofourown.org/users/local_doom_void/pseuds/local_doom_void). 



> This is a sequel directly following 'Let It Drown' by local_doom_void, I would definitely recommend reading that one first although it isn't strictly necessary.

_I scream at your ghost_

_When I miss you the most_

_I'll lace up my armour and fight for us both_

_Finish what you started and crown your stone_

Personal by Against the Current

  


➳

  
Something is wrong. She knows that _something_ is wrong. 

It’s there, in the way Dumbledore hasn’t taken his eyes off of the maze for the past however many minutes. In the way Fleur had limped her way out of the maze, blood on her face. In the way Krum had been _carried_ out of the maze, not even conscious to walk out himself. 

In the way neither of the Hogwarts students, the way _Harry_ , have yet returned. 

Ron is standing next to her, hands clenched tight around the edge of the seat, and she knows, she _knows_ that there is something wrong. 

It feels a little bit like not being able to breathe. Like that same icy panic that had gripped her in the split second between meeting the basilisk's eyes and waking up in the infirmary. That ice cold certainty that something has gone terribly, irrevocably wrong. She should never have let him go into that maze. Should have knocked him out and hidden somewhere that none of the teachers could find him until it was over. Until they were packed up and gone and there wasn’t danger hiding around every corner, waiting, always waiting. 

She knows that _something_ is wrong. 

And then the men sent in to check on the last two, sent in to check on Harry, come back with frantic yells and hands gesturing wildly. 

_“They’re gone,”_ they yell as panic ripples through the Hogwarts students. _“They’re both gone and the cup too. Gone.”_  


➳

  
It takes twelve hours for McGonagall to call for Hermione and Ron. 

She remembers every minute as if it’s been carved into her chest. Remembers it all with a crystal clear clarity that terrifies her. In a way that says, _this will be the thing to unmake you_. Ron sits silent next to her in the common room, the rest of the house circling around them with careful footsteps, and quiet whispers. 

She sits straight backed, hands folded, measures each breath as it leaves her body and she knows, she knows, she knows, she knows. She measures each breath and she knows, she will _never_ see Harry’s smile again. The thought lodges under her ribcage and threatens to strangle her to death with the idea of it, the idea of the rest of her life stretching ahead and never seeing Harry’s smile again. 

Ron sits silent and pale, knees pulled tight to his chest, breathing so slow that there are several wild, panic filled moments where she nearly reaches over to assure herself that he hasn’t left her too. She clenches her hands into fists, lets her nails bite into her skin. Measures each breath and thinks, _maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Please, please let me be wrong, just this once let me be completely wrong._

Ron has tears slipping down his face and she wants to scream. But screaming means that she acknowledges that she’s right and she’s still desperately, furiously clinging to the hope that she is wrong. But she wants to scream, wants to shake him. 

She measures her breaths. She wants to scream, _how dare you cry for him when you don’t even yet know if there’s a reason to cry_. She is only fifteen, she can’t do this, can’t handle the grief that she can already feel licking at her bones, waiting for the confirmation she knows is surely to come. 

The twins are in a corner in the back of the room, Ginny squeezed between them. Percy is sat off to the side of them somewhere, close enough to touch but still apart. In another corner the quidditch team sits, Oliver, for once, silent and watchful. Neville sits slumped against a wall next to the stairs to the boys dorm, head tipped back and shaking hands pressed to his face. 

She sits on the couch, ankles crossed, hands in her lap and waits. The fire burns down and still, no one moves, as if they’re all standing watch, all desperately, furiously waiting for the door to open and Harry to walk in, tired but here. Tired but … For Harry to walk in and say, _sorry guys, you’ll never believe what happened!_

What would she give for that moment she wonders. What would she give up to see Harry walk through that door? Her own life surely, and she knows that Ron would do the same. For all that there is a slow, simmering anger burning through his name, she knows he would do the same. 

But she had read once, a long time ago, before Hogwarts, before magic, that to give one’s life was not the greatest sacrifice. To stay behind, to deal with … 

She would give her life but she does not feel that it is enough. What would she give? Anything. She searches herself and decides, yes, anything at all. Whatever deity or higher power that is out there, they need only name a price. 

She measures her breaths and the door to the tower opens. McGonagall, when she walks through, has red rimmed eyes and looks as if she will fall over at any moment. 

“Miss Granger, Mister Weasley, come with me please,” she says gently, so gently, so gently and her eyes are red rimmed and her hands are shaking and Hermione knows, she knows, she does, she knows. 

What would she give? Oh, anything, anything at all.   


➳

  
If he’s being honest, which he has been trying to be now that Harry is gone, he doesn’t remember the end of fourth year. He remembers the slow walk from the stands to the castle, the screams of the men still ringing in his ears. _They’re gone, they’re both gone,_ they had screamed and Ron had known what that meant no matter how much he had tried to convince himself otherwise. 

If he’s being honest, and he wishes he had been honest more before, Harry should have died in first year, facing down Voldemort at only eleven. Should have died when pressed his hands to a man that shouldn’t have been alive and burned the skin from him. Should have died in second year, a twelve year old child against a basilisk the size of his house. 

That Voldemort had finally managed the task he’d been aiming to achieve since Harry’s birth shouldn’t have been so surprising and yet, it was Harry. It was Harry and he couldn’t be _gone_. He was Ron’s friend he couldn’t be. 

He remembers the slow walk to the common room and the space between Hermione and him. Remembers the heat of the fire and Hermione’s frozen features, her unbending spine. Remembers thinking, _please, please, please, I promise I’ll never be jealous again, I promise to believe him from now on, I promise. please. please. please._

And then, as if blinking awake from a dream, he remembers turning to see McGonagall standing in the doorway with red rimmed eyes and trembling lips. Remembers Ginny’s half step towards him, hand outstretched as if to stop the news from reaching from them. 

Remembers Hermione screaming, screaming, screaming, burning with rage and grief and then it all goes perfectly blank. 

He doesn’t know what he said, if he said anything at all. He doesn’t remember when he got home, but here at home he is. Sitting on his bed, blinking down at his feet, against his threadbare rug. 

He stands after a while longer staring at his feet, stands in the middle of his room, stares at the space where the extra bed _(Harry’s bed)_ should be, and the sun coming in the window and throws up before he can think to run to the loo. 

He wishes he could find the energy to scream. Wishes he could find anything around this grief, this guilt, these shaking hands.   


➳

  
A week later, after one too many bowls of soup forced on him by his mum, and one too many worried looks from his siblings, all who have seemed to come home at some point, he locks himself in his room and goes through his trunk. 

It’s sat untouched since he woke up and found himself at home. He opens the trunk and has to bite his lip to stop the cry that wants to bubble out of his throat. 

Harry’s cloak and the marauder’s map are sitting neatly on top of all his other things and he, he wants to, _he can’t breathe._

It takes him a moment to realize it’s because he’s sobbing so hard he’s choking on it. Choking on the pain, on the lack of Harry’s presence, the grief that’s infested his house, his parents, his siblings, him. 

He picks the cloak up with shaking hands, lets it unfurl slippery smooth over his lap and buries his face in it, sobs harder at the scent of Harry he can still just barely smell. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want this. 

He goes to sleep that night with the cloak grasped tightly in his hand and next time he opens his eyes, next time he remembers opening his eyes, it’s September 1st, the summer having slipped away and all he remembers of it is one week, grief drenched and hollow.   


➳

  
Neville feels as if he’s spent the summer in a bubble of cotton, everything he touches lacking an edge of realness he keeps expecting to find. How can a world where Harry is dead be real? How can a world where _Harry Potter, where the boy who lived,_ is dead be real? 

Often, he dreams of Harry’s face when he was first chosen to be a champion in the Triwizard tournament. Wakes up, heart racing, wondering what Harry would have done if he’d known, if he’d know that, that he’d just started the walk to his death. 

More often, he dreams of Hermione’s screams when McGonagall had brought the news, or had brought the confirmation of the news they had already known. Dreams of her screams and the way it had woken the entire tower, the first years clustered at the bottom of the stairs, white faced and terrified. Dreams of Ron’s blank face and vacant eyes, as if all the life had left him to go join Harry, even as his body kept breathing. 

His letter for fifth year comes, life moving on, even as his dreams never stop. He dreams of Harry, of Cedric, his mind becoming increasingly creative with the ways they could have died. _If the boy who lived can die,_ his dreams seem to whisper, _then what is stopping them from coming for you next?_

His grandmother snaps at him that his grades could have been better, as if this is something he should be concerned about. He stares at her and thinks of Harry, of his smart mouth and clenched fists. 

“I don’t see how it matters,” he says slowly, drawing himself up, doing his best to hold himself the way Harry would have. “Considering my friend is _dead_.” 

She stares back at him, mouth parted in surprise, and he turns and walks outside to the greenhouses, names the plants off to himself slowly. Starts over and names off the ones that can heal you in a pinch. Names off the ones that can protect you. Names off the ones that can kill you. 

Names off the ones that can kill someone else. _No one else_ , he promises, _no one else. I’ll make sure, I’ll do anything, to make sure there’s no one else_.   


➳

  
Ginny finds Hermione in a compartment by herself, nose buried in a book, and for just a moment it’s like the past few months never happened at all. As if at any moment she’ll see Ron and Harry walk in and sit down across from her. As if any moment, Harry will brush by her with a smile and elbow Ron out of the way and —

She knows it won’t. Even if she hadn’t just spent the entire summer watching Ron walk around the house with empty eyes, voice silent, she’d know it won’t. 

She moves on before Hermione can see her, not quite ready to speak to her. She needs a few more minutes, needs to breathe, to get away from Ron and the twins and their stifling, all consuming grief. 

She means to go find Luna and Neville, who at the very least won’t smother her with the force of their grief, means to but catches Hannah Abbott’s eyes as she’s passing a compartment and is suddenly, viciously reminded that the Hufflepuff’s lost a member as well. 

Hannah meets her eyes evenly, rage hidden away so well that Ginny would have missed it if she hadn’t spent the whole summer seeing that same rage staring back at her in the mirror. She stops and speaks with Hannah and Susan for a while.   


➳

  
She finds Luna and Neville later. Neville staring out the window, idly twirling a new wand between his fingers, foot tapping restlessly against the floor, and when he turns to look at her, she can see that he looks exhausted. Luna is curled in a corner, yarn caught on her finger, some unrecognizable pattern forming and lips pressed tight in a way they seldom are. 

Their grief lays quite over the compartment and she shoves her way onto the bench between them, her feet in Neville’s lap and her head on Luna’s lap. Neville’s hand curls around her ankle, warm and steady as Luna quietly begins to hum. 

“New wand?” She asks. 

“Yeah,” he says quietly, glancing over at her and shrugging. “I told my gran I was getting a new one.”

She raises an eyebrow, last she’d checked his gran had still been terribly offended at the mere mention of a new wand. “Did you?” 

His mouth twists, eyebrows curving down and she has an idea of what he’s going to say before he says it. “Harry’s dead,” he whispers, voice strangled. “And we know, even if they won’t admit it, we know who did it and what if he comes after Hogwarts next? What then? I can’t defend myself with an old wand.” 

“What then…” she echoes, stomach twisting uncomfortably, a dull headache beginning to form in the base of her neck. What then indeed. The headache spikes, and she closes her eyes, revels in Luna’s cool fingers running through her hair. 

Later, Umbridge gives a speech to the school that has Ginny reaching under the table and gripping Hermione’s hand in a death grip, lung burning from the force of the screams that she’s keeping choked down. 

But for now, she lays on the train, nursing her anger and thinking the whole world could burn if only she could erase the grief from those she loves. _I’d give anything_ , she thinks viciously, _anything to see them happy again. To see Harry happy again. Anything._   


➳

  



End file.
